Birds & Bees

With my son a nearly-teen, I'm struggling with something every parent does - the dreaded S*X word!:)

Granted, he gets a pretty comprehensive education in school. Here in SA AIDS is rife, and kids are told the what's and wherefore's early on - including on kid's TV programmes from when they're old enough to sit up and watch. Then there's your average "education" gleaned from simply watching TV programmes - or ads! We're not as bad as some other countries, but we're getting there....

A few years ago I sat my son down and explained the mechanics of what sex was and how boys/girls differ. The school has taken it a few steps further in their Life Orientation classes, and he knows quite a bit now.

But it's still up to me to instill the moral values side of things, and guide him through the rough, raging hormonal path ahead - and there's where I come unstuck.

What right do I have to tell him "save yourself for marriage" (the ideal, although almost everyone I know just doesn't seem to care these days), or even "don't do it until you're at least out of your teens" when I not only "did it" with my first boyfriend at 15 (below the legal consent age), but did it again and again, and ended up pregnant at 20.

To say "do as I say, not as I did" is a little unrealistic, a bit two-faced, coming from me, don't ya think?

On the plus side, he's seen what before-marriage sex can do - how a single parent family looks and what struggles there can be between estranged parents, struggles for finances, struggles for many, many things. And that may make him think twice perhaps.

But there's also times I feel I need to share with him what my past has done to me - what scars it has left so that I can no longer love, trust or even think about s*x without a huge pile of negative emotions coming down hard on me. I want him to know what damage random s*x can do - especially to girls, who invest more emotionally in it than guys do. He knows about diseases and viruses, but there's so much more behind the scenes he knows nothing about.

Until recently he showed no interest in girls. But it's coming. He's not so "NEVER, no way!" when I talk about girlfriends in his future. Things are changing. His body is changing - elongating, filling out, growing "hair in funny places". :)

And kids these days do things a lot sooner than they did even in my day...

I know I've got to do this, talk seriously to him, no matter how embarrassing it may be at the time. I wish there were a manual (and no, I'm not going to sit him down in front of a video, or hand him a book then flee the room!). I wish someone else could do it.

But it's up to me. If only I knew where to start!